TV CHEFS

An early TV cooking show from the 1950s was 'Cooking with the Bontempi's'. It featured Italian food with husband and wife team Fedora the cook, Pino the accordionist and a dog.

Graham Kerr's 'Galloping Gourmet' premiered in 1969 on U.S. television. Kerr's first TV cooking appearance was in a cooking demo in 1960 in New Zealand.

Marcel Boulestin became the first television cook when he presented the first of the Cook’s Night Out programmes on BBC on January 21, 1937.

During 1939-1941 there were a few televised cooking demonstration programs (there were fewer than 8,000 TV sets in the U.S. in 1942) . After World War II, in 1946 James Beard hosted the first regular televised cooking show in the U.S., 'I Love To Eat.' The show was initially 15 minutes, but later expanded to 30 minutes, and ran on the NBC network in 1946 and 1947. Only some audio recordings remain. Beard invented TV food styling, using ink to emphasize the veins in Roquefort cheese, and using mashed potatoes as a stand in for ice cream.

Julia Child's 'The French Chef' debuted in 1962 and Julia Child was a fixture for decades on public television.

Famed innovative television comic, Ernie Kovacs (1919-1962) first TV appearance was in Philadelphia as the chef in a live, unrehearsed cooking show. The show was called ‘Deadline for Dinner’, and aired on Philadelphia’s WPTZ (NBC). (Thanks to Peter Emory at Food TV for this info)